To Touch, To Contain
by Lorata
Summary: PROMPT: seneca crane/johanna, i've even loved a few times in my disgusting human way. Seneca Crane will not be denied, even when he is.


PROMPT: **seneca crane/johanna**, _i've even loved a few times in my disgusting human way_, from here.

* * *

When Seneca was three years old, a shopkeeper slapped his hand away from a display of strawberries. "No," she said sharply.

Seneca looked up at his mother, his forehead wrinkled into a frown. "No?" he asked. "Mama, what's 'no' mean?"

It's been the family joke since as far back as Seneca can remember. He was too young to remember the incident but he likes to think he does just because he's heard it so many times. Now his mind recreates it in fragments based on who was telling the story at the time:

"And then, I looked at that dreadful plebeian woman -" Mother always says, her laughter bright and sharp, fingers curled around the stem of a crystal goblet -

"- and you know Honoria," says Grandmama when she tells it, her grey gaze sharp and lips painted a fierce scarlet, "she has such a way with words -"

"- and Mrs. Crane, she told him, 'nothing you have to worry about darling'," the servants would whisper, before Seneca decided he didn't like the way they looked at him, pointed his chubby finger and they had to pack their bags.

The word 'no', as Seneca learns by the time he starts his schooling, is meant for other people. Not for the Cranes. Seneca learns what it means, what it represents, how to say it with the proper bite of command and curling twist of his lip, how to pause before speaking and impart the word with gravitas like he's pronouncing sentence, even if he's just deciding whether to have mustard on his sandwich.

* * *

When Seneca is ten, he asks for tickets to attend the Quarter Quell at the Capitol; his parents rent a suite in the Games Complex and he has a front row seat at the interviews, a spot in the sponsors box to watch the mentors scrabble for scraps like starving dogs.

When he's fifteen, he asks for an advance on his allowance so he can send his first sponsor gift of his very own; Lyme, the female tribute from District Two, wins her Games with the sword he sent her, and a month later Seneca gets an autographed picture to hang on his wall.

When he's twenty, he asks for a job working for the Gamemakers; he gets an entry-level position delivering coffee and shuffling paperwork, and within three years he's been promoted to a technician on the Games floor.

When he's twenty-six, he asks for Johanna Mason.

* * *

The thing is, she never fooled him, but that's not her fault, oh no. As assistant Gamemaker Seneca has _information_: interviews with people from her home town talking about her flashing eyes and fiery temper; incident reports from her school of the times she sent another student to the nurse's office with a broken nose when they made her little sister cry; a stubborn recommendation from her charmingly backwater employer at the lumber yard who speaks of her skill with an axe.

Seneca looks at the fifteen-year-old girl with the dark, lank hair hanging in her eyes and sees how she combs it down to hide the calculation on her face. He sees her hunch her shoulders and wrap her hands around her arms to hide the whipcord of muscles caused by years of working in the woods. He sees that no matter how much time she spends sobbing and wailing for her mother, for home, for someone to save her, that she never forgets to eat.

Johanna murders the first Career tribute - an uninspiring boy from District Two - with her belt wrapped around his throat, her knee in his chest and her fingers in his eyes. His fist smashes her nose before she chokes the life from him and he goes limp beneath her, but she snorts out blood, cracks the bones back into place, and sits down for a meal from the food in his pack.

Seneca rewards her with a rain of fire late that night that destroys her supplies and forces her to move. A lesser man might have helped her, but this girl is different, special; she's like Seneca, forged from steel and determination, never satisfied with mediocrity. She wouldn't want to win because the Gamemakers took it easy on her. When she wins she'll know herself truly worthy of her victory.

Her fight with the girl from District One leaves Johanna drenched in blood, and she strips down and washes herself in the river, unconcerned about the cameras that align themselves to give the audience every glimpse they can of her pale skin. Seneca's mouth goes dry, and he misses his cue to end the sunset because he's entranced by the orange light glowing on her shoulders, her hair. They reprimand him and he slides the Arena into darkness with more haste than usual. On screen, Johanna rolls her eyes.

This feeling is not unfamiliar to Seneca - his first came when he was fourteen, when Father bought him a pretty young thing from District One to make his son a man, and since then he's known nothing but the finest his money can buy - but it's the first time it has happened with a tribute, and it's never distracted him from his work.

After his shift he calls the Agency and has them send a lookalike, but she's just a copy, a facsimile, no more real than the illusions he and the others create in the Games Complex; she has the looks but not the fire, the build but not the presence, and halfway through Seneca gives up and sends her away. He queues up the feed of Johanna's latest kill, closes his eyes and lets his own hands and the sound of her voice, harsh and guttural as she screams profanities and buries a dagger in the Four girl's chest, take him over the edge.

He wakes the next morning, his desire far from slaked, and makes it to work just in time to see Johanna receive the axe that will split the sternum of the last tribute and bring her the crown. Johanna stands, one leg half-bent beneath her, bracing herself on the handle of her weapon with the blade still buried in the One Boy's chest, shuddering and gasping for breath. Blood splashes her clothes, clumps in her hair, and she slides both hands up her face and digs her fingers into her scalp.

Johanna Mason, Victor of the 66th Hunger Games, turns her face up to the sky and lets out a wild, insane laugh, and Seneca will have her. He knows because he must, because she's reached a hand down his throat and taken hold of his soul with her clever, blood-encrusted fingers, and Seneca will never sleep again until he gets it back.

* * *

Father has a timeshare out in District Ten; he likes to go there once a month or so and train his stallions. The thing about stallions, he tells Seneca once when he brings him along - pulling the rope taut around those strong, flailing legs with hoofs that could break his jaw or snap his arm in half - is that they're twice as beautiful once they're broken. When that wild energy snaps and drains away and the true submissive spirit reveals itself, like peeling away the ugly outer layers of a goosefruit to get at the pink flesh at the centre. The fight is sweet, the defeat sweeter.

All beautiful things, Father tells Seneca - the horse shudders beneath his hand, eyes rolling in its head - are better when broken, because that's how you know for sure they're yours.

Seneca loves Johanna; he knows this because more than anything he wants to see her come apart beneath his hands.

* * *

"I can't let you in to see the President just because you want to, Mr. Crane," says his secretary, buffing her nails. She's nothing, a pretty thing drunk on the power that comes from sitting behind a desk. She doesn't know who she's dealing with. "I can pencil you in for an afternoon in September, if you'd like."

"I'll wait," Seneca says. He settles down in a plush leather chair outside the door, crosses his legs ankle over knee, and waits.

"You're not honestly going to stay there." She glares at him.

Seneca slips his pill case from his pocket, humming to himself as he slides his fingers over the capsules. Back when he first started on the Games floor, Seneca worked for four days without a break, thanks to specially commissioned pharmaceuticals that curbed his appetite, stopped his bodily functions, and kept him sharp and alert. It got him the notice of the head Gamemaker, Tobias Flamencia, who had Seneca promoted that next year.

Around eleven in the morning of the second day, the secretary tells him President Snow will see him now, even as she tries to skewer him through with her stare. Seneca smiles at her and slides to his feet, heady with triumph. 'No' is for other people, indeed.

The office smells of roses and something else, something glorious, something that stands the hair on Seneca's arms on end and fills him with the awareness that he stands in the presence of greatness. In retrospect, perhaps two days in a waiting room lounge chair wasn't the brightest idea before meeting the most powerful, amazing man in all of Panem, but too late now.

"Well, Seneca," says the President, and Seneca nearly faints at the sound of his humble name spoken in that sonorous voice. "I spent the morning going over your file, and I must say, you've managed to impress me. You have quite the record, a very meteoric rise for someone your age. Now what can I do for you?"

Seneca swallows. "Well, sir, I was wondering if there's been any progress on the contract for Johanna Mason."

"My, aren't we ambitious," President Snow says in a dry drawl. "At this point, I have to say none at all. She hasn't garnered the sort of response that warrants that kind of paperwork. Are you here to give me information on an eager bidder I might have missed?"

"In a sense, sir," Seneca says, his heart thrilling in his chest. "I would like to apply for her myself."

The President tilts his head. "I'm not sure you have the cachet to get on the list for a Victor yet, Seneca. Their contracts aren't available to just anyone."

It's a testament to his parents' strength and conviction in raising him that even a no coming from _President Snow_ makes Seneca's skin prickle with frustration. He keeps it from his face and lets out a breath instead. "I would be willing to put my future up against it as collateral, if need be, sir. Consider it an investment."

"I see." President Snow raises an eyebrow. "And what, exactly, do you see in this girl that our usual clientele doesn't?"

Seneca had two days to come up with an argument, organized with mental footnotes and citations, one that would sway the President to his way of thinking with the sheer beauty of his persuasive talent. What he says is, "My father owns stallions," and spends the next five seconds trying to figure out how to give himself a spontaneous aneurism out of sheer mortification.

But surprisingly, the President merely smiles, a slow, friendly, almost conspiratorial expression that warms Seneca's heart and curls in his stomach. "I completely understand," the President says, and Seneca's breath sticks in his chest. "I see you're a man who won't take no for an answer. Well, I'll tell you what, Seneca, I like to see such strong ambition in young people, and I like to see them doing something with that ambition. Why don't I see what I can do, and I'll be in touch."

Seneca all but floats back to his apartment.

* * *

Two months later, a personal messenger shows up at Seneca's door with a small card, white linen finish with gold lettering and the Capitol seal embossed on the reverse side. "FOR YOUR LOYALTY," it reads in precise uppercase, and underneath: "7PM."

"Thank you," Seneca says, and gives the man a generous tip with shaking hands.

* * *

They've dressed her in waves of green and piled her hair on the top of her head in an elegant coiffure. They've tried to make her appear older and more sophisticated, coating her face in makeup and her exposed skin with glitter. Only her eyes are the same, young and dark and wild, painted with smoky shadows and lined with swooping lines of gold. She looks terrible, nothing like the fierce warrior-girl who drove an axe through the skull of the girl from Two, but no matter. That wont be staying long.

"My dear," says Seneca, holding out his hand.

Johanna takes his hand - his whole body reacts to her touch as if to a live wire - and then Seneca is on his back with his shoulders pressed into the thick carpet as she holds a knife to his throat. His head aches - she struck him above the eyebrow before knocking him to the ground. The blade slides against his skin - a searing warmth - then something trickles hot and sticky down the side of his neck, and no, no, no, this is not how it's meant to go. Seneca has entertained countless girls in his rooms and paid far less for them, and none of them have had the gall to do this. This is not how the games are played.

Johanna is better than this. It angers him to see her acting this way, unworthy of herself.

"You sick fuck," Johanna grits out, and her voice, hoarse and rasping with disgust, still sends a shiver through him just for its proximity to his ears. "If you think for one second I'm letting you put your hands on me, you've lost your fucking mind! I let them bring me here so you could see my face when I tell you that it's never, ever going to happen, you hear me?"

Seneca's heart trips fast and panicked in his chest, but he refuses to let this be the end of every dream he's kept dear to himself, whispered into his pillows at night. "Do you know who I am?" he asks, keeping his voice cool, allowing just the hint of a sneer into his tone like Mother taught him. Show authority and people will believe it; that's the way the world works, the way that the people behave. "I'm a Gamemaker. It would be unwise to turn me down."

"Oh, really?" Johanna snarls, the knife still poised at the hollow of his collarbone.

She's beautiful and perfect and slowly, slowly, Seneca's thoughts settle. Father doesn't raise geldings, after all; it's the chase, the struggle, that makes the victory so poignant. In a way it's like the Hunger Games all over again; the crown would mean nothing if all the Victor had to do was win a game of cards or present their case to a panel of adjudicators. Resolve seeps back into his body and steadies his hands.

"I should think so," Seneca says. He can't fight her physically - he might be larger and heavier but she's proved her abilities by walking out of the Arena, and he is confident but he is not, in fact, eager to commit suicide - but he can wear her down with logic. She's intelligent, his Johanna. She will see reason. "You'll have your first tribute to mentor next year. It would be a shame if something happened to her. The Arenas are so treacherous, you know."

He's proud of himself until Johanna laughs, the sound like a rusty blade. "You think I care? They're dead anyway. Go ahead, give them a quick death, you'll be doing me and them a favour. At least nobody will be calling them into an apartment the next fall and expecting them to let some Capitol asshole fuck them."

"If you did, you would receive direct contributions to your sponsor fund, which would in turn only help your tributes. You have a lot to learn about how the world works, Miss Mason," Seneca says, and this time the fury is back, building up inside him just like the time Felicia Greenbough turned him down as his date to the closing ceremonies of the 58th. He told Father when he got home; he hopes Mr. Greenbough is enjoying his relocation to District Eleven.

"Apparently," she says, and then the knife is gone and her hands are around his throat. "You know what, you're right. We did fuck, didn't we, and you asked me to tie you up and choke you except I'm just a fresh Victor, I don't know my own strength yet."

She will not defeat him with her threats. Not even a fresh Victor would dare murder a Gamemaker in his own apartments when records can and will be produced to put her at the scene. To do so would be suicide.

Except that as her palms press down against his windpipe, as the air stops in Seneca's lungs, bursting, burning, fighting to be free, as his vision dims and his head spins, perhaps suicide is exactly what she wants, his Johanna, his victor-goddess. Seneca has just enough time to ponder that thought before the door breaks open from the outside and armed guards pull Johanna off him.

Cameras. He'd forgotten the security system, which is amusing when considering how much Seneca pays for it. One of the guards strikes Johanna across the face; the other punches her in the stomach, forcing her to double over. She still has her knife - she allows them to think she's beaten, but her hand twitches toward her side. Seneca, trained in the unwritten narrative of the Games, sees how it will all play out; she will strike, they will retaliate, and then she will be dead, and no, no no no.

"Stop!" Seneca bursts out, and they do, for they are paid to obey. "Stop, it's a misunderstanding. This is all most embarrassing, and quite unnecessary. What you've interrupted was quite consensual, and at my request."

Johanna snorts, but doesn't argue, and Seneca fixes her with his gaze and holds it, lets her see that he is choosing to show her mercy. A stallion does not choose the moment of its taming; only its master can do that, and while Seneca is not exactly patient, he has learned the value of biding his time when necessary.

"The interruption has, I'm afraid, made me lose my appetite for the evening," Seneca says, waving a hand and affecting unconcern. "You may escort the lady out. I'm sure she can find her way home."

"I'm sure you can get your money back if you ask nicely," Johanna shoots back on her way through the door.

* * *

That night Seneca's fury eats away at him, consuming him from the inside out like maggots writhing in a corpse. She's not who he thought she was; the brilliant, manipulative girl who took all of Panem by the throat and forced them to sit up and take notice, who crawled to Victory through a wave of blood and smoke and entrails, she can be undone by something as easily as the pressures of victory themselves. She would take death over the glory her life could be - a life in his bed, at his side, under his protection, until the next Quarter Quell and beyond - and he thought her more than this.

She would likely call it bravery, but Seneca has seen such bravery before. He calls it commonplace.

In the end, Johanna Mason is just another tribute, just like the rest of them; the only difference is that unlike the others, she had the gall to tell him_ no_, and Seneca will not stand for that. Not from her. Not from anyone.

* * *

The President calls him in the next morning. Seneca stands in his office with a ring of bruises purpling his throat, a bandage over the knife wound and a plaster over the wound above his eyebrow. He stands battered but unbowed, and Seneca is not so foolish that he doesn't notice the amusement that curls the President's lips into a small smile, and less foolish still than to react to it. He miscalculated, and likely the President saw it. It's a test of Seneca's resolve, like everything else that has been set before him.

"I can have your payment rescinded and returned to you from her winnings," says the President, and he is definitely amused, but while it rankles like rubbing velvet against the grain, Seneca does not take the bait.

"That will not be necessary, sir," Seneca says, holding himself straight, his shoulders back. "Instead I would beg your indulgence for something else."

"Oh?" One pale eyebrow lifts. "And what is that?"

"I assume she's to be punished for her insolence."

"Indeed. A direct assault on a Gamemaker is enough to order her execution, if you want to push for it."

Seneca smiles. He cannot have her, he sees that now - he never could, because Johanna Mason will not be tamed. She will never be his; he will never know the joy of taking her to pieces and putting her back together in a way that teaches him to honour him, fear him, love him.

She cannot be won, but she can and will be broken.

"Let me choose the punishment instead," Seneca says. "And once it's done, let her know exactly what she did to deserve it, and give her as many years as fate allows to ponder that decision."

"My, my," says President Snow, cocking his head, and for the first time he looks at Seneca with the first spark of something that might, in time, develop into respect. "Seneca Crane, I believe I'm beginning to see the full weight of your potential."

* * *

The Mason home burns while its Victors is called away for an engagement; the fire is Capitol-made, manufactured to continue even after the house and its occupants have long been consumed, so that when Johanna returns it's to the smoke and the crackle and roar of the bonfire. It dies instantly when she shrieks and flings herself toward the flames in a predictable attempt to turn the fire of execution into her own pyre, and she's left with the whisper of wind through ashes.

Seneca watches from his seat in the hovercraft, hovering invisibly above the house, as Johanna sinks to her knees before the single white sheet of paper that sits, pristine, amid the blackened rubble. The cameras zoom in on her shaking hands, the slump of her shoulders as she reads the legal document absolving her of any duty as social companion in the Capitol from here on, for the rest of her natural life. She traces her fingers over the elegant swoop of Seneca's signature - handwritten, no secretarial stamps for something this crucial - before she flings it away and turns her face to the sky, just as she did at the end of her Games, only this time it is not mad triumph that tears the screams from her mouth.

It's not beneath his fingers that Johanna Mason breaks, but it's by his hand all the same. Seneca Crane is nothing if not practical, and instead of caressing her skin he lets his fingers brush the white rose in his lapel. A gift from the President, a token of his esteem, like the piece of paper in Seneca's breast pocket appointing him to apprentice under the Head Gamemaker with the intent of taking over when he retires after the 70th.

And all because of the girl who rages below him. Seneca would have given her everything, anything she wanted, once he'd made her his, but now he gives her what he can: the greatest lesson she will ever hope to learn, and all the years she will ever have to feel it.

Below him, Johanna smears her face with soot and flings curses at the sky, and Father was right. She is even more beautiful now.

"Home, Dietrich," Seneca says to the pilot, and switches off the screen.


End file.
